Thursday, May 31, 2007

Planting and Japanese Knotweed galore

Planting on the hillside

Murky Sanctuary pond

The stewardship season at Riverdale officially started on Tuesday. Quite a few people showed up, I would say at least a dozen, which was good because we had some planting to do. The Riverdale site is mostly on slopes and that's where most of the plantings take place This makes things somewhat more complicated so the more people who show up, the better.

We planted Red Oak, Eastern White Pine, Dogwood and Eastern Hemlock.

Eastern Hemlock

Since so many people showed up, the planting was all done in less than an hour, so the rest of the time was spent removing Japanese Knotweed for the most part.

Later, the team had the pleasure of observing wood ducks in one of the ponds. Unfortunately, they were too far to take a good picture, but we observed them with binoculars.

The pond itself is looking a bit clearer than before, now that the aerator is on every night. This device was installed last year to increase the level of oxygen in the ponds.